OECD Economic Surveys: Czech Republic 2008
This edition of OECD's periodic survey of the Czech economy finds strong growth and manageable inflation. It addresses a number of key economic challenges including ensuring fiscal sustainability, improving the labour supply, and harnessing globalisation.
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Tackling labour and skill shortages
The fast pace of growth has moved the spotlight in labour market issues. In the past, the chief concern was with regionalised long-term structural unemployment. This problem is receding and a new challenge of ensuring labour supply has emerged. Unemployment rates hit an 11-year low at 4.9% in the last quarter of 2007 and the share of the working age population will start shrinking soon. To prevent labour supply becoming a constraint to growth, it is crucial that additional attention is paid to activating the remaining reserves of labour. This chapter looks at where possible reserves may lie and how policies could help bring them into employment. For young cohorts, education policy is the key issue. In other groups, comparison with other OECD countries shows there are sizeable reserves among prime age women and older cohorts, which link to family policy and early retirement incentives.
Also available in: French
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